Sarah Palin Implicates Environmentalists For BP Oil Spill on Facebook

If "extreme environmentalists" were not successful in prohibiting land based oil drilling in the United States, then companies like BP would not have to resort to looking for oil in the deep oceans.

It's an argument that's been made recently by the likes of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. And now, the same "blame-environmentalists-for-the-Gulf-oil-spill" conclusion is the one that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is pushing on her Facebook page.

This afternoon, Ms. Palin lashed out at those who seek to protect the environment from the evils of oil drilling in a post titled, "Extreme Enviros: Drill, Baby, Drill in ANWR--Now Do You Get It? in which she wrote the following:

There is nothing "clean and green" about your efforts. Look, here's the deal: when you lock up our land, you outsource jobs and opportunity away from America and into foreign countries that are making us beholden to them.

Palin continued:

Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country's energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It's catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proved.

Palin, who made the chant "Drill, Baby, Drill!" famous in the 2008 presidential election, favors drilling in the Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has now surpassed 1989's Exxon Valdez accident, in which a tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound, dumping 10.8 million gallons of crude.

Our New Approach to Comments

In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among those with ideas to kick around. Please read our Help and Feedback section for more info.

Add a Comment

Add a Comment*0 / 3000 Character Maximum Comment Moderation Enabled. Your comment will appear after it is cleared by an editor.

4

6 Comments

Filter by:

bris46

This is just one more example of "small minds" spewing their views on this issue. It's not about where we drill for oil, it's about our failure to develop renewable energy sources in the past 35 years. I remember the gasoline lines of the 1970s when America was held hostage by the Arab states due to the OPEC oil embargo. That is when we should have begun working toward weening ourselves off foreign oil, but we didn't do it. Pres. Carter wanted to do it, those evil tree-hugging iberals knew it was the right time, but there was no one on the other side of the political aisle willing to stick their necks out and go against 'big oil' and the auto industry. So stop your whining on both sides about who to blame for this environmental tragedy in the Gulf, and ask your parents and grandparents why they didn't push harder for changes back then. Then ask yourselves, as you coninue to take road trips and drive your kids to soccer practice in an SUV that gets under 20 miles to a gallon of gas, who is 'really' to blame for all this.

Sarah is right. Calling her dumb won't discredit the truth she speaks. Environmentalists use the snail darter the something or other owl and the Caribou as excuses to prevent drilling for oil or for logging so they have to take much of the blame when BP has to drill in mile deep waters. The snail darter or the owl may be alive and well in it's natural habitat but the little Gulf fishies and turtles and birds are dying now.

Citizen Palin seems to see everything in stark black and white when we all know nothing is quite so simple. Environmental pressure on-shore may well be one factor. But, there are many other contributing factors including decades of MMS mismanagement, the quest for corporate profits, consumer frustration with the price of gasoline, new but unproven equipment and technology and the deep water environment itself.To blame one factor out of many is a characteristically disingeneous strategy employed by Mrs. Palin.